Bay of Spirits A Love Story

by Mowat, Farley

• ISBN13: 9780771064678
• ISBN10: 0771064675
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-13
• Publisher: Emblem Editions

Summary

In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland's famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life. A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed aboard Farley's beloved but jinxed schooner as it lay on the St. Pierre docks, once again in a cradle for repairs, and changed both their lives forever. This is the story of that love affair, of summers spent sailing the Newfoundland coast, and of their decision to start their life together in Burgeo, one of the province's last remaining outports. It is also an unforgettable portrait of the last of the outport people and a way of life that had survived for centuries but was now passing forever. Affectionate, unsentimental, this is a burnished gem from an undiminished talent. I was inside my vessel painting the cabin when I heard the sounds of a scuffle nearby. I poked my head out the companionway in time to see a lithesome young woman swarming up the ladder which leaned against Happy Adventure's flank. Whining expectantly, the shipyard dog was endeavouring to follow this attractive stranger. I could see why. As slim and graceful as a ballet dancer (which, I would later learn, was one of her avocations), she appeared to be wearing a gleaming golden helmet (her own smoothly bobbed head of hair) and was as radiantly lovely as any Saxon goddess. I invited her aboard, while pushing the dog down the ladder. "That's only Blanche," I reassured my visitor. "He won't bite. He's just, uh . . . being friendly." "That's nice to know," she said sweetly. Then she smiled . . . and I was lost. FromBay of Spirits From the Hardcover edition.

Author Biography

Farley Mowat began writing for a living in 1949 after spending two years in the Arctic. He is the best-selling author of thirty-nine books, including Never Cry Wolf, Owls in the Family, The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, and The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float. With sales of more than fourteen million copies in twenty-five countries, he is one of Canada’s most successful writers.


From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpts

Such was the nature of the creature that lay awaiting me at dockside when I disembarked at Port aux Basques. Already laden to her marks, the SSBaccalieuwas noisily blowing off surplus steam, which veiled her black hull and white-­painted upperworks.

She was not going to be crowded on this trip. Instead of her usual complement of a hundred or so passengers, she was carrying only seventy-­five. Her blushing young purser, who was new to his job, gave me cabin B on the upper deck. It was a wonder of Victorian elegance gone a little shoddy: creaky wicker chairs, worn Persian carpet, etched glass in the alleyway door, and an enormous English “water closet” almost big enough to serve as a sitz bath.

I had barely taken all this in when the ship’s whistle let out a throaty roar andBaccalieubegan to throb with the slow revolution of her great propeller shaft. I rushed on deck to find we were underway; but there was little to see. Night had fallen and the weather was chill and “thick-­a-­fog,” as a passing deckhand unnecessarily noted. Never mind. I retreated to the snug warmth of my cabin for a good night’s sleep.

It was not to be. At 11:30 p.m. a deckhand knocked hard upon my door to tell me the captain wanted me on the bridge.

Half expecting we would be taking to the lifeboats, I flung on my clothing, hurried across the bridge deck, and entered the wheelhouse — the holy of holies on any ship. A squat figure took shape in the darkness within and introduced himself.

“Ernie Riggs, skipper of this one. Heard you’ve been in the salvage boats out of Halifax. Thought you might like to help us take this old she-­cunt into Rose Blanche . . . if we cangetin. Nasty little place. Tight as a crab’s arsehole.”

I did not know if the captain was serious or not. There was certainly nothing I could do to help. The night was black as death and the fog almost too thick to breathe. Pretending I ­wasn’t there, I backed into a corner and watched and listened as Skipper Riggs and the helmsman tookBaccalieuthrough a maze of reefs into an unseen and unseeable little harbour, then laid her alongside a wooden wharf that I never even saw until the lines went ashore and the fog-­diffused glow from a lamp on the shore told me we were there.

I remained on the bridge most of the rest of that black night so as not to miss the succeeding episodes ofRiggs Dares All— a harrowing life-­and-­death adventure in real time.

Coming in to La Poille two hours later, Riggs could not have been able to see much farther than the nose on his face. Furthermore,Baccalieu’s searchlight was out of order and her old-­fashioned radar useless at close quarters. None of this seemed to concern Riggs as he paced rapidly back and forth, muttering to himself:

“Oh you she-­cunt! Where’s she going? Narrow place this . . . very narrow place.Fuckingnarrow place. ­Can’t turn her here. Oh hell, s’pose I got to try.”

Then, as the end of a dock miraculously appeared about ten feet off our bows: “Never goin’ to make it. LardJesus, not going to make it!”

When people on the dock began yelling that we were going to make a hole in their island, Riggs stepped out on the bridge wing and shouted back:

“What’re you silly fuckers worryin’ about? We’re right as houses! Finest kind!”

With which he pulled the engine telegraph to full astern, andBaccalieukissed the dock.

An hour later we continued on our way and, with the coming of a pallid dawn, Riggs turned the bridge over to the second mate and took me with him down to the saloon for breakfast.

“You’ll do, Little Man,” he said over his fourth mug of tea. “Lo

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Excerpted from Bay of Spirits: A Love Story by Farley Mowat
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